How the Internet of Things is changing work

Date:11/03/2015

Company:Enlighted

Source:Fast Company

HERE’S HOW TECHNOLOGISTS THINK THE WORLD OF IOT WILL CHANGE THE WORKPLACE—AND HOW IT’S ALREADY CHANGING HOW WE DO BUSINESS TODAY.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an exciting concept, a future where “billions of things are talking to each other,” as technology consulting company SAP describes it. We’ve seen gadgets and domestic appliances connect to the Internet and ping your smartphone with info, but it’s becoming more clear that these toys are a prelude to a vastly connected world. And yet, we spend most of our day at work. Here’s how technologists think the world of IoT will change the workplace—and how it’s already changing how we do business today.

First, let go of that image of devices and gadgets chatting amiably. The IoT world will have so much data coming in from so many sources that the challenge will be in making any sense of it at all. As technology author Anthony D. Williams posted in 2011, “Virtually every animate and inanimate object on Earth could be generating and transmitting data, including our homes, our cars, our natural and man-made environments, and yes, even our bodies.”

So how do we make sense of that data? Algorithms. The math magic of specialized algorithms point out trends in the data that lead to conclusions.

THE SUBTLE POWER IN TRACKING MOVEMENT
Think of what happens in a workplace every day: People enter buildings, get coffee, casually chat, hold meetings, and leave at the end of the day. That’s a ton of activity. Hidden inside that volume of actions are patterns and lessons to take. Enterprise IoT tech company Enlighted has built a solution for how to track that activity. Their trick: Put sensors in the lights.

Enlighted offers to replace an office’s inefficient traditional lighting with fleets of LED lights. In each of those lights is a sensor cluster that maps activity across the entire office. Enlighted’s software captures motion information on a simple schematic view of the floor that tracks motion across every inch a company owns—every inch that’s lit up by Enlighted’s lights—and companies can make informed decisions about the space they’re renting.

“It’s really about helping people understand exactly how their space is being utilized. We can literally tell you how every square foot is occupied every second of every day,” says Enlighted CEO Joe Costello.